33

SCAMARCIO WAS ON HIS way to the squad room, morning birdsong in the trees, when a little voice in his head told him to take a detour via the Vatican. Borghese, it seemed, was in Frascati, but if his wife was right, and her husband was planning some kind of revenge, it seemed sensible to alert Cafaro to the possibility. Scamarcio very much doubted that Borghese would try to harm an aged cardinal, but the threat provided a useful pretext for asking Cafaro about his work history. Scamarcio still needed to know whether his time at the Vatican had ever overlapped with the case of the missing girl Martina Cherubini.

When Scamarcio arrived at the gendarmerie barracks, the young policeman on desk duty threw him a look of disdain. Scamarcio ignored it and asked if the boss was around. The youth examined his badge for a few seconds longer than seemed necessary, then rose and muttered, ‘Wait a minute.’

Scamarcio studied the walls and noticed a line of pictures of the gendarmerie corps with different popes throughout the years. He thought he spotted a young Cafaro with Pope John Paul II, which would mean he must have been in the corps at the time of the Cherubini disappearance. Scamarcio was about to scan through the list of names beneath the picture when a booming voice behind him made him jump.

‘Scamarcio!’

He turned and saw Cafaro standing in the doorway to his office. It was as good an opportunity as any. Scamarcio pointed to the picture. ‘This you?’

Cafaro frowned then walked over to the wall.

‘Well spotted. I must have been about twenty-four at the time.’

‘Did you like him?’

‘Who?’

‘Pope John Paul.’

Cafaro’s frown deepened. ‘Er, yes. He was a good man — decent, kind.’

‘And Ratzinger?’

Cafaro turned to Scamarcio. ‘I’m finding your behaviour a little odd this morning. For once, you don’t try to slope in unannounced, and now you’re asking for gossip about the popes.’

Scamarcio smiled. ‘Can we step into your office for a moment?’

Cafaro nodded, his face marked with distrust. Scamarcio noticed that the desk officer was observing them both closely.

When they were seated either side of Cafaro’s immaculate desk, Scamarcio said, ‘This is a courtesy visit, really.’

‘A what?’

Scamarcio cleared his throat and crossed his legs. He spotted a red-wine stain on his beige cords that he hadn’t noticed when he was getting dressed. Cafaro, as usual, was pristine in his perfectly pressed uniform.

‘Gennaro Borghese has gone AWOL, and his wife thinks he might have hatched some kind of plan to take revenge on his son’s killer.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Gennaro blames the church, blames Amato. I don’t quite follow the logic myself, but if the man is unhinged by grief, who knows where it might lead him.’

Cafaro pouted and scratched beneath his starched collar. ‘Really, you think so?’

‘I don’t know. In my heart of hearts, I doubt it, but I thought you should know. Plan for the worst and all that.’

Cafaro picked up a round glass paperweight and weighed it in his palm. ‘This is a fucking weird one.’

Scamarcio snorted. ‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you swear, Cafaro.’

Cafaro ignored him and shook his head, thinking. ‘I mean, there’s no way Amato did it: he’s in his seventies … he’s a good man. None of it makes any sense.’

‘I dunno, either, Cafaro. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t struggling.’

Given the surprising first hints of camaraderie, Scamarcio took the plunge: ‘Talking about weird cases, were you here when the Cherubini disappearance happened?’

Cafaro carefully laid down the paperweight and stared at his empty blotter. Scamarcio wondered if he was trying to recompose his expression. If he was, he’d failed, because when he finally looked up, there was a new darkness in his eyes. Sorrow or fear — Scamarcio couldn’t tell.

‘That was a terrible thing. I can’t imagine how her family have lived all these years with no answers. No closure.’

Scamarcio was taken aback by the humanity, by Cafaro’s empathy. He knew Cafaro probably wasn’t as much of a dick as he pretended, but this was more than he’d expected.

‘Yes, it must have been dreadful for them.’ What Scamarcio really wanted to say was ‘You haven’t answered my question’, but he knew he just had to sit back and wait now.

A few moments of silence followed, before Cafaro said, ‘I’d only been with the gendarmerie a year, and I was as low down the pecking order as you can get, but there were rumours …’ He broke off and looked up, and Scamarcio cocked an eyebrow. ‘This off the record?’

Scamarcio nodded vigorously.

Cafaro sighed. ‘Our boss back then — Filippo Battaglia — word was that he was into some nasty stuff. They said he organised parties for the diplomatic corps and that Cherubini may have been taken for one of those.’

‘He’d taken her?’

‘Oh, that wasn’t really clear. He may have ordered someone else to take her, or he may have helped in the cover-up after.’

‘Cardinal Amato commented on it, you know — to the media. I came across it when I was going through his press.’

Cafaro sighed again. ‘I did know that. People here weren’t happy. The thinking was that Amato should have kept his mouth shut — Vatican laundry should not be aired in public.’

‘God, a child disappeared. There was a duty to speak out, surely?’

Cafaro frowned, seemingly perplexed. ‘I’m just telling you what was said — I don’t necessarily agree with it.’

‘So, Filippo Battaglia …’ Scamarcio stopped. He hadn’t heard a knock at the door, but now realised that a massively tall, extremely broad man in uniform had entered the room.

‘Ah, Battaglia,’ boomed the hulk. ‘Cafaro here was his protégé. Quite the golden child.’

Cafaro remained quite still, but Scamarcio could feel the air leave the room. A look of consternation crossed the stranger’s face. He extended a hand to Scamarcio, more hesitant now. ‘Sorry to interrupt. Alessandro Giuliani — Cafaro’s deputy.’ He turned to Cafaro. ‘I heard you had the detective in here, but I needed to tell you that a security meeting has been summoned for 10.00 am.’

‘Why?’ There was colour in Cafaro’s cheeks.

‘Call from Interpol apparently — some new intel just in. It’s the terror threat. Again.’

‘If we respond to every terror threat that comes in, we’ll spend our lives in security meetings.’

‘Don’t we already?’

‘It’s probably worth listening to. I was caught up in the siege last summer, and it was no joke, I can tell you,’ offered Scamarcio, trying to ease the tension in the room.

‘Yes,’ said the stranger decisively, as if a puzzle had just been solved. ‘I remember. Didn’t they give you the medal of honour?’

‘They did,’ confirmed Scamarcio, ashamed.

‘Blimey,’ said the hulk. ‘That must have been intense.’

Scamarcio tried not to remember. It still gave him nightmares. ‘Not something I ever want to repeat.’ He rose from the chair. ‘You’re busy, Cafaro, so I won’t take up any more of your time. I just wanted to give you that heads-up.’

Cafaro finally looked at him, his cheeks still flushed, then rose to shake his hand. He stared at Scamarcio, as if he was unfinished business — inconvenient business. He seemed about to say something, then stopped. Instead, he murmured, ‘I appreciate it, Detective. I’ll put a guard on Amato’s room — as you say, no harm in being prepared.’

His deputy’s face formed a question, but Cafaro ignored it. ‘Stay in touch, Scamarcio. Seems to me that you and I could work together better if we tried.’

Scamarcio smiled. ‘I thought you might say that.’

Back at his desk, Scamarcio studied the highlighted telephone numbers on the sheets Sartori had given him. It would have been helpful if Sartori could have coded them for frequency: a sea of fluorescent yellow didn’t mean much after a while. Scamarcio wondered if they could get the phone records in digital form and then ask Negruzzo to run them through a pattern-finding programme, but all that took time. It was probably simplest to just go the old-fashioned route for now.

Sartori had managed to supply a list of the numbers of frequently dialled friends and family — mother, wife, son, work, mistress, Gennaro’s twin brother, who, despite daily attempts, they still hadn’t been able to reach. Eliminating all these was painstaking work, and Scamarcio cursed himself for letting Sartori and Lovoti head out to Frascati. He could have been there, enjoying the views, while they sifted through the minutiae.

After thirty minutes of scoring through digits with a pen and ruler, Scamarcio glanced out at the windswept vista beyond his window. The trees were bare and scarred, the pavements black and cold. Summer felt like an ever-fading figment of his imagination.

‘Battaglia’s golden boy.’ The words had been chasing each other around his head ever since his meeting with Cafaro. Did it mean that Cafaro could have been involved in the Cherubini case? Did it mean Cardinal Amato knew that? Or did it mean nothing at all? Cafaro might have been a favourite of the boss, but it didn’t necessarily follow that he would have taken part in Battaglia’s extracurricular activities. Scamarcio almost wished he hadn’t found out about the link. It didn’t feel helpful.

He rolled his head and tried to click out the stubborn knot in his neck. When he glanced back down at the papers, the figures had finally stopped swimming. Once relatives, mistresses, and the rest had been eliminated, he was just left with four highlighted numbers. The simplest option seemed to be to call them. He tried the first.

‘Desert Orchid,’ answered a sing-song foreign voice. She sounded Asian — Thai, maybe, or Filipina.

‘Are you a restaurant?’

‘No, darling, not a restaurant.’

‘A shop?’

‘Depends on your definition of shop.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘I think you are having wrong number, darling.’

‘No, wait, don’t hang up.’

‘You just embarrassed maybe?’

‘Ah, yes, that’s it. I’m embarrassed. A bit shy.’

‘Don’t worry, darling, many are. You want to make appointment?’

‘An appointment, yes.’

‘What for, darling?’

‘What are the options?’

‘There’s whole night, three hours, an hour, thirty minutes. All depends on what you’re looking for?’

‘Blow job,’ Scamarcio chanced.

‘Oh, OK — for that you can just walk right in.’

Scamarcio sighed and cut the call.

The next number appeared to be a telephone banking service. The bank was the same as the one they had for Borghese, so no surprises there. Scamarcio tried the third number. ‘Giovanni De Luca’s office,’ answered a woman with a Milanese accent.

‘Oh, excuse me, I’m not sure I have the right number. Could you tell me where I’ve come through to?’

‘This is the office of Dr Giovanni De Luca, director-general of the National Pharmaceutical Service,’ said the woman impatiently.

Scamarcio frowned. ‘The pharmaceutical service of the Ministry of Health?’

‘Yes.’

‘Here in Rome?’

‘Yes. Who is this?’ Her irritation was plain.

‘I’m sorry, I do have the wrong number. Apologies for wasting your time.’

He hung up and stared at the wall. Why had Borghese been calling the National Pharmaceutical Service so often? Was it for work?

He looked back at the sheets of paper. Sartori had obtained records going back six months. Scamarcio studied the dates of the calls to the pharmaceutical service. They all seemed to fall around the beginning and the middle of each month. He went further and further back, checking whether the pattern held. It did.

He dialled Sartori. ‘I need you to get Borghese’s call history for the last five years.’

‘Five years?’

‘I’ve seen something. Get onto the phone people ASAP — ask them if they can send the stuff digitally. Soon as, Sartori.’

Scamarcio hung up. There was one number left to try — a mobile. He dialled. The office was quiet, and his pulse hammered in his ears as he waited for whoever it was to pick up.

‘Benedetti,’ snapped a gruff voice.

‘Sorry, is this Lorenzo Benedetti?’ Scamarcio tried.

‘Eugenio Benedetti. You’ve got the wrong number.’ He hung up.

Scamarcio opened Google and typed in the name, but he already knew who he’d just spoken to — his instincts were telling him it was so. The first result was a Wikipedia entry. Scamarcio clicked on the link.

‘Eugenio Benedetti, Italian Secretary of State for Health. DOB: 24 July 1967. Member of the Partito Democratico.’

Scamarcio returned to the list, his fingers running down the numbers. He checked the times against the calls to the director-general of the pharmaceutical service. The calls to Benedetti were made on exactly the same day, and were also twice monthly. They didn’t last long — no more than five or ten minutes. The ones to the pharmaceutical service ran to fifteen, twenty minutes sometimes.

Scamarcio rested his head against the back of his chair and ran his biro-stained fingers through his hair. Why would someone doing drug-marketing have a direct line to the health secretary? That they might call the pharmaceutical service seemed slightly more probable, although the fact that Borghese seemed to be speaking to the director-general himself gave him pause for thought.

Scamarcio brought a fist to his mouth. A picture was starting to form that he didn’t much like. It was the spider’s web again: fine and intricate; taut and deadly. It would only spell trouble for him and the department.